Latest Project Activity

The PHLASK Project continues to evolve as new collaborators get involved and contribute to the water sharing initiative.

Mapping:

Taylor Johnson has taken the lead on our GIS mapping and database. His work has been an asset to the project. We are currently in the process of upgrading the mapping features to be more dynamic and integrated to our database of water-sharing locations.

Both the Philadelphia Water Department (PWD) and Philadelphia Department of Public Health (PDPH) enthusiastically support the initiative. They are working to help us cull data from different City departments that can be compiled into the PHLASK water-sharing network.

Water Tasting / Testing Event:

We will be having an event at the Chemical Heritage Foundation to do a water tasting/testing event to try and dispel misconceptions about the public water system with data. Mural Arts' group Trash Academy will contribute programming around the waste generated by single-use plastic bottles.

Next Steps

We are looking to build capacity in the following areas:

UX/UI development - improve how the data is displayed on the map

PHP/Wordpress wizardry - integrate the map into the website and automate some of our databasing processes

General marketing - add new sites to the PHLASK network of water-sharing sites and spread the word about water-sharing.

Taylor and I will be attending the Meetup tonight, January 30, to talk more about the project and solicit interest from the Code For Philly community.

All the best,
Billy

P.S. Please feel free to join the #PHLASK channel on Slack to join the discussion and follow the project!

I wanted to provide a bit of background on myself and the inspiration behind (Un)Incarcerated. I work as an independent editorial and documentary photographer, covering stories in Philadelphia and the surrounding area. I also teach journalism at Temple University, where I graduated with a degree in journalism and political science. Last year, I spent time helping behind the scenes on some reporting with The Reentry Project, a collaborative between various Philly newsrooms to cover stories on prisoners returning to their communities and the people who are helping them do it.

Back in November, I attended The Reentry Blueprint: Stories and Solutions from the Formerly Incarcerated, a night of short, TED Talk-style conversations that highlighted problems and presented solutions to issues of reentry. Near the start of the evening's event, anyone who had ever been to prison was invited to stand up and be acknowledged. Given the nature of the event, I knew the formerly incarcerated were obviously among the crowd, mixed in with community. But even after spending months covering these issues myself, I was still surprised by the number and diversity of people that stood, fracturing my expectations for age, gender and ethnicity.

Bringing that moment to others is at the heart of (Un)Incarcerated. To develop a project that recreates and expands on that experience. To break down the wall that is built up around the 1-in-6 people in Philadelphia that have been incarcerated, despite having served their time. To both challenge how we see the formerly incarcerated and to better educate ourselves on their experience.

Personal feed for starred projects (privately viewable)

Hey everyone. MentorPhilly is back at it again. Thanks, Corey, for re-engaging me. We have established a website using the WordPress platform. Currently, we are creating the language for our ABOUT page and registration page and establishing our look; any insight or support with that would be greatly appreciated. One of our focus right now is creating a campaign across multiple social media outlets, promoting MentorPhilly and recruiting Mentors. We also are creating our logo, any design support would be helpful. The slack that will be attached to our web page similar to Code for Philly's site has texting capabilities we would like to create a simpler way to respond back from slack like a one-button command to respond vs a string of commands (hope that makes sense). Is anyone familiar with InVision or Adobe XD we like to build on our conceptual design?

Hello Code for Philly!

The Code for Philly website swat team is looking for a few more volunteers. If any of these match your skill set - and bringing to life the next generation of this website sounds interesting, contact our Product Owner, Maria Caruso (slack: a_priori_rainbows)!

Roles

Writer / Story Teller - To help with A) Crafting blog posts based upon interviewing our community members to showcase the great work and/or B) Help clarify and improve our existing website content

Visual designer - someone to help work with our front-end developers to design our new website theme. Preferably someone who has experience also working with HTML/CSS/Bootstrap themes.

Redesign will be broken up into two phases

Phase 1 – approx. completion date of Jan 1st

Phase 2

Desired Site Features

Permissions system: would allow people to PM, restrict access to certain projects, etc. Possibly based on a “reputation” credits system, wherein people receive higher permissions by completing, managing, or contributing to projects

Team messaging system: Find ways to make project team communication easier

Following our work designing the site this past weekend at PowerUp Reentry, we deployed a prototype (python/js/bootstrap) today to help advance the ongoing design and feedback process. Our goal is to create a resource for families/friends/advocates/supporters of incarcerated persons to get information tailored to their needs to assist their returning citizen in the reentry process.